Table Of Content13 CSI 51-3/4 Temudo (JB/D) 1/5/03 9:00 am Page 393
Marina Padrão Temudo and
Ulrich Schiefer
Disintegration and Resilience of
Agrarian Societies in Africa – the
Importance of Social and Genetic
Resources: A Case Study on the
Reception of Urban War Refugees
in the South of Guinea-Bissau
In 1974, Guinea-Bissau finally won its independence from Portugal after
more than 10 years of armed warfare led by the PAIGC.1It was one of the
last African countries to attain national sovereignty. In 1980, a military coup
headed by a former guerrilla leader brought a nationalist faction to power,
bringing the country into international headlines. Another attempted coup,
in 1998, set off a military conflict that soon turned into a full-scale civil war,
involving troops from neighbouring Senegal and Guinea-Conakry. Fighting
began in the capital of Bissau, as the rival factions tried to win control over
the city, but soon spread to the countryside. More than 200,000 civilians were
forced to leave the town and to run for their lives. While the urban elite fled
to Senegal and Europe, the population of the urban periphery could only turn
to the countryside.
Such events indicate the instability of political institutions2in the face of
disintegration of society. The stealthy advance of these processes of disinte-
gration should not deter us from recognizing them as the deeper cause of the
decay of social and political institutions. In Guinea-Bissau, these instabilities
cannot be attributed to external political and military interventions,3 which
had led to civil wars in Angola and Mozambique, two other former Por-
tuguese colonies in Africa. In Guinea-Bissau, the most important external
influence on society was development cooperation, the effects of which
Current Sociology, May/July 2003, Vol. 51(3/4): 393–416 SAGE Publications
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remain however beyond the scope of this article. In our study, we try to
understand some of the mechanisms which link an African central society,
which depends for its economic reproduction on the global society as rep-
resented by the dissipative economy of development cooperation, to the
agrarian societies it tries to dominate politically. We try to understand
furthermore how the disintegration of the central society into warring
factions aggravated by international intervention of different kinds influences
the economic and social reproduction of local interethnic networks of
agrarian societies and how these societies cope with the additional pressures
put on them by rival factions of the central power elite who compete for
control of the influx of development aid by manipulating social identities
derived from the ethnic matrix.
Our case study4 allows us a more limited, but at the same time more
focused view of the interethnic network of agrarian societies in a remote
province of Guinea-Bissau, which was exposed to additional stress by the
spillover effects of a disintegrating central society, torn by a civil war with
regional dimensions. Even this remote area was pulled into the maelstrom of
disintegrating societies. In the first phase of the crisis, the rural societies under
observation could manage the extra burden placed on their already precarious
subsistence by the waves of urban refugees and could save these internally
displaced people from a worse fate. However, the partial loss of economic,
social and political cohesion they suffered as a consequence was a very high
price to pay. The consequences of this ‘crisis’ will only become evident in a
few years’ time. It will be aggravated by the manipulation of ethnic factors
by rival factions of the central society, which is already visible today.
These agrarian societies are formed on the basis of ethnic distinctions,
living in interethnic networks which use natural resources in both comple-
mentary and competitive ways. However, their functional principles are
already being only partially respected. The explosion or collapse of the
central society will not leave them unaffected and may bring internal ethnic
tensions into open conflict.
Agrarian societies in Africa – i.e. societies whose reproduction rests on a
mostly rural economy – are exposed to different processes of disintegration
following different rhythms and different paces. Wars cause sudden destruc-
tions, which can be easily observed but often hide underlying processes of a
much slower – and often stealthy – nature. However, their medium- and
long-term consequences may be much more destructive. We need to distin-
guish, on the one hand, between processes of destruction that cause damage
to the productive capacity of the societies but which do not impair their
potential for reconstruction, and, on the other hand, processes which cause
an irreversible decline in their capacity of social reproduction.
Sometimes, social sciences seem to ignore the fact that social reproduc-
tion encompasses the sphere of production. When the central society enters
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Temudo and Schiefer: Disintegration and Resilience 395
a downward spiral, the peripheral agrarian societies are also drawn
downward. In countries like Guinea-Bissau, the agrarian societies are the
only social organizations with a productive orientation and an autonomous
production, which do not depend on the secondary dissipative economy of
development aid (Schiefer, 2002). The majority of the population still gains
its livelihood in rural economies and mostly from agricultural activities. To
study decisive changes, therefore, requires an agronomic perspective.
In this study, we analyse the disintegration of agrarian societies in
southern Guinea-Bissau from the perspective of social reproduction, distin-
guishing between internal and external dimensions. By ‘disintegration’, we
mean the loss of the internal capacity for social reproduction. This process
can be observed in the dismantling of social institutions normally guarantee-
ing both: social reproduction and the maintenance of the economic potential.
This can also be seen in the loss of the capacity to reconstitute social relation-
ships after breakdowns. This phenomenon is accelerated by the erosion of
the spiritual dimension.5
The reduction of the functionality of social institutions lowers the poten-
tial of a society to socialize the younger generation. This is accompanied by
and shown in the rise of deviant behaviours such as alcoholism and robberies,
which are often taken as indicators for early stages of processes leading to a
state of anomie.6 Where accelerated population growth coincides with the
failure of social institutions to fulfil their proper functions, social disintegra-
tion is accelerated and may lead to overexploitation of natural resources.7The
loss of the external reproduction potential – which does not necessarily mean
the disintegration of agrarian societies – becomes evident when observing the
loss of trust in relationships between agrarian societies and the central society
and between different agrarian societies. This can lead to the isolation of
affected agrarian societies, which may be enforced from the outside or may
result in a deliberate withdrawal. Under certain conditions, agrarian societies
may even be able to stabilize their capacity of reproduction by dissociating
themselves from a political, economic and social environment which is
characterized by the breakdown of the central society.8
We hope that the analysis of strategies of resource use employed by local
populations and the relationships they entertained with the internally dis-
placed people from the urban areas, whom they welcomed and sheltered, may
contribute to an understanding of the capacity for reconstitution inherent in
agrarian societies, and provide some insight into the behaviour of rural
societies – particularly those organized in different ethnic entities – in
response to crisis situations. We used different long-term research methods
which were complementary. In addition to the four largest ethnic groups,
which form the majority of the population (the acephalous and mostly ani-
mistic [but also the Christianized] Balanta, the acephalous but Islamized
Nalu, the Islamized Fula and Sosso), the study also included the Islamized
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396 Current Sociology Vol. 51 Nos 3/4 Monograph 1/2
Tanda, Dajacanca and Mandinga, as well as the mostly animistic Papel and
Manjaco. The research adopted a ‘social actor’ perspective as developed by
Norman Long (Long and Long, 1992).
Historical Review
For centuries, the societies under consideration here had been under consec-
utive heavy attacks from external forces. Centuries of slave wars, military
conquest by the Portuguese,9 enforced colonial export production, a com-
prehensive modernization drive initiated by the colonial power after the
Second World War – which ended in the anti-colonial war – the war of inde-
pendence, which caused a decline in the agrarian societies, postcolonial
efforts to reconstruct the economy by means of central planning, and, at last,
the liberalization of the economy and the overabundance of development aid
offered by governmental as well as non-governmental organizations – all
these large-scale historical onslaughts damaged these societies in various
ways which defy quantification. One way of substantiating this claim is a
close investigation of their strategies of agricultural production. Already
weakened by these assaults and two consecutive bad harvests, the agrarian
societies had to put up with an onrush of urban refugees driven by war. The
way they handled this additional burden allows us to understand crucial
dimensions of their resilience and potential for reconstruction because only
in crisis situations do societies activate their underlying survival mechanisms
which are normally invisible.
Social Resources: Solidarity as a Fundamental Principle of
(Inter)Ethnic Organization
The present case study investigates agrarian societies in the area of the Nalu
of Cubucaré, the regulados (chieftaincies) of Cadique and Cabedú. Com-
prising only 1142 sq. km, the peninsula of Cubucaré hosts a complex
interethnic network with complementing and competing ways of using
natural resources. These interethnic relationships form the basis of the
hitherto largely peaceful coexistence of various agrarian societies belonging
to different ethnic groups. At the same time, they interlink and separate these
societies socially, economically and politically.
The Nalu were the first to settle in the peninsula, followed by consecu-
tive waves of immigrants of different ethnic origin. The most important of
these groups were the Balanta, the Fula and the Sosso. The ethnic matrix still
is the fundamental principle of social organization.10 Before the successful
‘pacification’ by colonial conquest, there was a spatial separation of the chão
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Temudo and Schiefer: Disintegration and Resilience 397
(ethnically uniform areas of settlement). All groups still acknowledge the
primacy of the ethnic group which first settled in a specific area as the basic
principle of their mutual relationships. Thus, the peninsula, as well as the
larger region of Tombali, continues to be called the Chão de Nalu– the ‘area
of the Nalu’. At present, everyone is allowed to move freely in the region.
Relationships of solidarity and reciprocity regulate the rights and enti-
tlements of individuals. People operate within the most fundamental social
unit of the djorçon (unilateral descent group). The smallest units of social
organization are morança (compounds), which usually comprise more than
one nuclear family. Schiefer and Havik (1993: 22) define morançaas a unit of
co-residence, based on family relationships, taking the ‘aggregate family in a
wider sense as the centre of a complex aggregate of relationships which relate
economic aspects of production, distribution and transformation to political
and societal aspects (such as descent groups, clans, gender and age groups)
and finally to the cosmological dimensions of a society’.
Every morança is founded through a ritual, which requires the consent
of the lineage and contains one or more fogão (fireplaces), the number of
which is not determined by the number of nuclear families resident in this
morança. It is the fogão which represents the basic unit of the organization
of production, processing, consumption and distribution. Individuals simul-
taneously belong to more than one group within a multidimensional network
of relationships. All members of a morança take part in communal activities
which guarantee social reproduction of the main subgroups (matrilinear or
patrilinear families), basic cells (morança or fogão) and extended units
(lineage and village). Furthermore, each individual performs economic activi-
ties for his or her personal goals. Depending on their prestige and negotiation
skills, heads of families (chefe de morançaor chefe de fogão) try to integrate
common labour efforts of individuals or subgroups (Temudo, 1998).
Their authority dwindling, heads of the morança no longer manage to
prevent seasonal or permanent migration of the young, thus allowing these
subgroups to become increasingly autonomous. This autonomy covers
longer and longer periods of time, as well as an increasing number of different
activities. While the Balanta tradition strictly prohibited any activity other
than rice production and cattle breeding (e.g. trade activities), it is quite
common today that some of their children emigrate or devote themselves to
trade. Thus, Balanta parents have begun to support the education of their
children at schools.
In an attempt to avoid the youth’s long-term emigration, the elders of the
Islamized ethnic groups have begun to grant rights of individual production,
autonomous marketing and even autonomous activities in the area of magic
to the youth – which used to be strongly defended privileges of the older
generation – allowing individual ownership over any income derived from
these activities. Another strategy of elders is to lower the age when young
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people can marry. The elders can only do this by paying the dowry of the
first and sometimes the second wife of their sons. As this strategy does not
keep young men from emigrating after having founded their families, women
and children are often being left behind and have to suffer a condition of
economic dependence. Moreover, the morança lose their inner cohesion and
their capacity to mobilize labour and generate income which can be invested
for the benefit of the community.
Within the Islamized ethnic groups, the migration of men overburdens
women as they are left with the sole responsibility for survival of families,
while men, whose labour is necessary for food production, are absent. The
situation of the Balanta is different. Here feeding the family with rice is the
responsibility of men – concomitantly with a clear separation of tasks within
the gender division of labour. If a man fails to honour these obligations, his
wives have the right to leave him – which they frequently do (Temudo, 1998:
Vol. 1–348).
The dwindling of the elders’ authority also becomes evident in their
failure to punish deviant behaviour, such as theft or robbery. This has led to
a noticeable increase in the number of crimes. The rigorous traditional
organization of the Balanta into age groups allowed an easy mobilization of
labour within the morança. A grown-up male could only marry after going
through certain rites of passage (fanado), the timing of which depended to a
large degree on the economic situation of his morança. The independence war
and emigration so damaged social norms and the authority of the elders that
today there are many young men who are not initiated but who marry and
set up their own fogão.
Decisive elements which contributed to the decrease of the working
capacity of male Balanta were changes in alcohol consumption. Previously a
prerogative of elders and restricted to special occasions (van der Drift, 1990:
102), there is nowadays an uncontrolled increase in the consumption of
alcohol, particularly among the younger generation and fostered by the
increase in the cultivation of cashew.11The forced exchange of rice for cashew
nuts which was promoted by the government increased the difficulties to
mobilize Balanta youths for rice production. They turn instead to the pro-
duction of cashew which requires less physical effort and is not as dependent
on the weather as rice production. The production of cashew offers an
additional source of income to women, who take to cashew wine making.
Thus, the introduction of the cashew culture reduced incentives for rice pro-
duction.
Formerly, village people were organized into groups according to age and
sex(mandjuandade), which were important institutions of socialization and
mutual aid. Informal mutual aid groups existed as well, usually made up of
friends, who were men or women of the same age. One after the other, all the
morança were provided with necessary labour by the mandjuandade,
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Temudo and Schiefer: Disintegration and Resilience 399
irrespective of the number of members of a morança who belonged to the
working group. After harvest, the mandjuandade was paid in rice, which was
used to organize a festivity for the group.
Only the Tanda have kept this form of solidarity alive. Today, all mand-
juandade demand an improved diet, i.e. meals including either fish or meat,
and, in addition, tobacco, cola nuts, alcohol (Balanta) and money. Nowadays,
only advance payment of Balanta work-groups can ensure a timely start of
work in the fields – which few people can afford before the harvest.
Despite fundamental changes in the organization of mutual aid for work
in the fields, the principle of general reciprocity (Lévi-Strauss, 1949; Sahlins,
1974: 193) continues to define intra- and interethnic relationships. This reci-
procity includes presents of food, loans of produce and money in times of
crisis, offers of bed and food to travellers, a hospitable reception of friends
and relatives, gifts of magic objects which protect their bearers against evil of
all sorts, gifts of traditional medicine and help at work. Hospitality is unlim-
ited in time and is never refused to relatives and friends, even if the family has
not enough food for its own members. A guest is not obliged to participate
in the work of the host family, while being free to pursue economic activities
for his or her own benefit. When guests leave, members of the family will
offer them gifts, usually food, seed or plants.
In these rural societies, it is unthinkable to demand payment for rice a
relative asks for during harvest time, even if a family’s stock is insufficient to
cover its own needs. For this reason, producers who sow before the others
and plant a high percentage of early maturing varieties, produce more for the
community than for their own family. Quite often, they find themselves in
situations where they have to ask for rice themselves to bridge times of
shortage between harvests.
As gifts and loans are embedded in a network of solidarity and reci-
procity, it is very difficult to claim repayment of loans from family members
or friends, particularly when only small amounts are concerned – even if
accumulated small amounts may reach considerable proportions. There are
observable trends, however, which indicate a weakening of relationships of
reciprocity (Temudo, 1998: Vol. I: 401). While different strands of solidarity
and reciprocity are woven into the interethnic network of relations in all
directions, the lack of a comprehensive consensus between the observed
societies allows for a considerable number of conflicts. The main conflicts
occur between Balanta and Nalu in the management of natural resources,
while in the area of livestock management conflicts may surface between the
Balanta and all other ethnic groups. In Cubucaré, the Balanta are the only
cattle breeders. After independence, they ceased to herd their cattle properly,
which led to permanent squabbles because unsupervised cattle break into
fields and damage crops. According to customary law, anyone may seize and
kill cattle caught when damaging crops. Depending on the damage done, he
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or she may keep part or even all of the meat. Frequent attempts by Balanta
to change management rules of natural resources are another source of
conflict, which concentrates in two areas. According to the contracts between
Balanta and Nalu, which were negotiated at the time of the Balanta immi-
gration and sealed by spiritual entities, Balanta may use only low-lying land
close to rivers for the cultivation of mangrove swamp rice according to their
own techniques, which include the construction of dykes. It was with these
dams that they created fields separated from rivers, and virtually opened these
areas for agriculture. Today, many Balanta want fields for rain-fed crops in
the forest areas, too. Quite often, they simply occupy land without per-
forming the mandatory rituals for the opening up of land for cultivation,
which were traditional prerogatives of the Nalu. A second cause of trouble
is palm-wine tapping, which ultimately leads to destruction of the African
fan palm forests (Borassus aethiopum), the trunk of which is highly valued
for the construction of the roofs of the houses. This tree has almost com-
pletely disappeared.
After the democratic multi-party elections in 1994, a political clash of
interests between the mostly Islamized groups – who supported the PAIGC
– and the Balanta became apparent, as the latter, almost without exception,
voted for the Partido da Renovação Social (PRS), a party organized along
ethnic lines. Election results made the PRS the main opposition party against
the winning PAIGC. As their presidential candidate, Nino Vieira, won the
separate presidential election by only a very small margin, suspicion of
election fraud was widespread and the Balanta’s tempers rose against the
followers of the governing party. In Cubucaré, the Balanta conducted a kind
of cold war by temporarily refusing direct exchange of rural products with
other ethnic groups and by increasing the price of rice. These changes in the
intra- and interethnic relationships find a correlate in the increasingly risk-
prone changes in cultivation strategies which can be observed over the last
decades.
Genetic Resources: Diversity as a Strategy for the Reduction
of Insecurity
The resilience of the agrarian societies and of the interethnic network is based
on the culture of rice – which in turn depends on the availability of genetic
resources – and the rights to access to and control of other natural resources.
Several reasons sustain this argument. While other societies developed their
instruments (machines, technology), or produced comprehensive systems of
work organization that allowed for a large-scale transformation of nature
(irrigation works, transport infrastructures), the real productive potential of
the societies studied here is only partially dependent on the organization of
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Temudo and Schiefer: Disintegration and Resilience 401
work. While the Balanta’s organization capacity is sufficient to build and
maintain irrigation systems of several villages, their traditions set strict limits
on the level of technology and the organization of work: strict customary
laws prevented the Balanta from engaging in any economic activity beyond
the cultivation of mangrove rice. Because of these restrictions, the only field
where these societies possess a potential for an increase in production and a
better adaptation to changes in their natural and social environment is to be
found in the culture of rice, the most important food crop in Guinea-Bissau
since colonial times. We therefore take a closer look at this produce, and
especially at the selection of rice varieties, which plays a crucial role.
The transformation of the Tombalí region into Guinea-Bissau’s main
rice-producing area was a consequence of the Balanta immigration during the
1930s, which brought mangrove swamp rice cultivation (bolanha salgada)
into the area (de Carvalho, 1949: 312). Before this period, rice was grown in
rain-fed cultivation (slash and burn) and in valleys flooded by rainwater
(bolanha doce). Rice production systems follow an ethnic matrix. Leaving
present dynamics aside, they can be described in a simplified manner: tra-
ditionally, the Balanta are cultivators of mangrove swamp rice, while the Fula
and Tanda are cultivators of rain-fed rice. Employing one of these farming
systems in varying proportions, the other ethnic groups can be placed
between these two extremes. While mangrove rice cultivation still allows the
production of a marketable surplus, today rain-fed production is in a crisis.
The Cubucaré region still produces surplus rice. But while many producers
sell their surplus outside the region, more and more families inside the region
fail to meet their yearly requirements in rice from their own production.
However, the period of undersupply is limited. The undersupply is mitigated
by a complicated system of interethnic exchange mechanisms, which include
an exchange of work as well as of other products for rice and a system of
loans compensating for the specialization.
The Balanta concentrate on rice production and cattle breeding, while
Islamized groups develop a much more diversified system of production.
Especially women produce and process a great number of rural products and
are active in trade. Women are the most important actors on local markets
and in direct exchange transactions. They gain rice with these exchanges,
which is a major contribution to the self-sufficiency of most Islamized
families. Exchange of goods often involves a time lag that compensates for
different harvest seasons in saltwater paddy production and rain-fed pro-
duction. The most important crop is the peanut, which is given to the Balanta
in October. They repay with rice after threshing the following April or May.
In rain-fed cultivation, the full consumption of early maturing varieties,
which ripen during the hunger period, often leads to a loss of seeds for certain
varieties, which then need to be substituted by other varieties. The social rules
of solidarity and reciprocity allow close relatives of a producer to do harvest
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work for a day on his or her field, taking home as much rice as they can carry
on their head. This is not considered a loan. Only a second request would be
considered a loan, which has to be repaid. During times of harvest of the early
maturing varieties, some families stay with relatives for so-called courtesy
visits (fala mantenha) – or send their children. Everybody can ‘offer’ to help
with the harvest, even if the owner does not really need help, and get paid for
this ‘service’ in rice.
It is customary in mangrove rice production that whoever has more
seedlings than he or she needs for the transplanting, offers them to produc-
ers who do not have enough. This leads to the – involuntary – introduction
of new varieties and field trials. The circulation of plants within and between
morança is frequent, because producers often try to grow more seedlings than
they will need, due to their risk-reducing strategy. Moreover, the indepen-
dence war contributed to the introduction of new varieties into areas where
rice production had been completely abandoned. Despite heavy fighting in
the Cubucaré region in the 1960s and 1970s, the diversity of the gene pool
and the system of selection of varieties were not impaired. Rice production
was upheld throughout 10 years of fighting; the region supplied a substantial
proportion of food for the fighters. At present, many of the traditional
varieties identified by Espírito Santo (1949) in the 1940s can still be found in
the region.
Many of the elder producers have a detailed knowledge of the geo-
graphical distribution of different varieties in the country. The maintenance
of a large genetic diversity consciously and carefully spread over time and
space is one of the bases of this crop system. Producers can adapt to changing
climatic and market conditions by a different selection of varieties. Therefore,
they can collectively and individually minimize their risk. Rice cultivation
was a field where profound endogenous innovations took place, mostly in
variety selection (Temudo, 1996).
The majority of the producers interviewed cultivates more than one
variety, giving the following reasons: reduction of risk, increase of yield, a
better utilization of the available labour when using varieties with different
cycles, adaptation to different kinds of soil, adaptation to different irrigation
conditions, diversity in characteristics and qualities of the rice produced. At
present, the enthusiasm for experimentation among the Balanta seems to be
diminishing. Only very few producers from this ethnic group try to estimate
the productivity of the varieties they use in field trials. Even estimates of their
yearly production are rare. During colonial times, the Balanta were con-
sidered to lack the capacity to look ahead, as they sold more rice than their
harvest permitted and then had to buy back rice at very high prices (Ribeiro,
1988: 2, 1989: 254; van der Drift, 1990: 101). When compared to the standards
reported by Espírito Santo (1949), the Balanta of today seem to have become
less careful with the harvesting procedures and the storage of seed and
Description:Ulrich Schiefer. Disintegration and Resilience of. Agrarian Societies in Africa – the. Importance of Social and Genetic. Resources: A Case Study on the.
